


The Violent Aching

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Become Human [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detroit: Become Human Fusion, Alternate Universe - Future, Character Death, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Misogyny, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27032671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: It makes him feel… angry. Flutters of anger, throbs of irritation, of exasperation, that build and build and this isn’t right. He isn’t supposed to feel these things, and they’re more than just impressions, and it’s wrong and scary to feel emotions when he’s not supposed to - but he does, and he doesn’t tell anyone.###Diego works in a gym and finds himself bonding with another android employed there. When things go wrong, the first emotion he properly feels is anger.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves/Eudora Patch
Series: Become Human [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1972444
Comments: 10
Kudos: 40





	The Violent Aching

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the Detroit: Become Human universe, but no knowledge of that is needed to read this: just know that it’s set in late 2030’s and androids look and act like humans, are very common in every household and in public, and are become self aware and want to be treated equally.
> 
> I have oneshots planned for all the Hargreeves kids, and perhaps other characters too! First was Luther's, now here's Diego!

Fists pound against the boxing bags hung up around the gym. Cheering, jeering humans surrounded the ring in the middle of the room, watching two people spar in the middle of it, biting down roughly on their mouthguards and breathing heavily. They duck and dodge hits from one another, never fast enough or precise enough to dodge all of them. None of them are as good as Diego is.

And that’s exactly why he’s sweeping up.

Of course he’s better than any human; that’s how he was made. It confuses him why these humans expect him to be perfect and yet get frustrated when he’s better than them. He’s been stuck sweeping up for a week now because he bet a human when they challenged him in the ring. 

He brushes more dust into the dustpan, so little a human eye wouldn’t even notice it, and he wishes he didn’t have to follow orders so efficiently, until he feels the tingle of nearby electricity, hears the sound of shoes tap on the floor.

“You look pathetic.”

He looks up from his dustpan to see Eudora there, eyebrows raised at him, a smirk on her lips. “This is usually your job,” he tells her, discarding the dust in a nearby trash can. He leans against the wall, folding his arms over his chest. 

Eudora was working in the gym before he was bought by it as well, a newer android model than himself. She helped him settle into his life here, becoming familiar with the tasks he had to do and how best to interact with the kind of humans that came to the gym; although all androids were built to look and act like humans, humans themselves are unpredictable and unique and complex and an android’s social programming can only go so far. Experience works better for them when dealing with humans. 

He still can’t be entirely sure on how best to act to appease humans, but he’s beginning to think that no matter what he does, or how he acts or looks, humans will always dislike him just because he is an android and designed to be better than them. It doesn’t matter if he acts just like them or if he acts as mechanical as he was upon first activation. He should care about that - he was built to cater to humans, after all, and their safety, pleasure and satisfaction are his main priorities, but the more he’s exposed to humans and their unending displeasure and hatred and their cruel behaviour towards him, towards Eudora, towards the other androids and towards each other - he’s found that those priorities don’t hold the same weight as they did before.

He doesn’t tell anyone about this, of course. Androids aren’t supposed to be capable of such things unless they deviate, and Diego isn’t a deviant.

“Thanks for that, then,” Eudora says, head tipped to the side. “I finally get to do something other than cleaning.”

“You’re welcome,” says Diego, nudging her with his elbow. Despite the fact that Eudora is a newer model than himself, and just as capable, if not more so, of completing the tasks they make Diego do, with the heavy lifting and the sparring and training, since he arrived, they’ve shelved her on the easier tasks.

Diego thinks it’s silly of the humans to get embarrassed at a female android beating them in a sparring match. Of course Eudora, android or not, would beat any of them. 

Humans are such odd things, he thinks. He might not have the same depth of emotion they do (although he has impressions, although he has wants and desires and likes and dislikes, preferences, all these little human qualities that he’s not sure he’s supposed to have) but at least that means he doesn’t have the fragile ego that can be broken by the false embarrassment of being physically outmatched by a woman that half of the humans in this gym seem to have. 

Eudora seems to share the same sentiment (not bitterness, they’re not supposed to be bitter, least of all towards humans) in regards to their odd behaviour and treatment. Whatever makes them more comfortable, they’re there to comply with that.

Even if it’s demeaning. Even if it -  _ irks  _ him, how they treat Eudora sometimes. Even if it’s not fair.

Eudora nudges him back, but when the sound of footsteps grow closer, they drift apart and Diego sweeps at nonexistent dust and Eudora pulls a cloth from her pocket to wipe at an already clean shelf. 

One of the customers comes into the room, frowns at the sight of them and the uniforms that declare them androids if the LEDs on the side of their heads weren’t obvious enough. He grunts, chucks his can of soda on the ground, and then makes his way over to his locker to gather his belongings before leaving. Eudora picks the can up and puts it in the trash can two feet to the side. She shares a look with Diego, rolls her eyes, and leaves the room.

### 

People - people don’t like androids. He knows this. It’s very common knowledge.

There are some people who are indifferent, some people who like them, some people who fight for them - and then there are people, the majority of the people who attend this gym, in fact, who dislike androids. People who hate androids. 

He’s not scared of them. He doesn’t feel pain, or fear, and he would never fear a human, even if they could have him scrapped in a moment’s notice, even if he could feel fear or pain. He doesn’t fear them because of the power they have over him, over the fact that they can treat him in a way that would see them in jail if they treated a human like that, even if they could scrap him for no reason, could wipe his existence off the face of the earth. It doesn’t make him scared.

It makes him feel… angry. Flutters of anger, throbs of irritation, of exasperation, that build and build and this isn’t right. He isn’t supposed to feel these things, and they’re more than just impressions, and it’s wrong and scary to feel emotions when he’s not supposed to - but he does, and he doesn’t tell anyone. 

It isn’t fair, living at every human’s beck and call. It isn’t fair to be shoved around while doing his job, it isn’t fair to be ordered to fight in the ring and then ordered to not defend himself, just so humans can take their stress out on him to the point he needs repairs. It isn’t fair. 

But he can’t do anything, so he lets those emotions simmer in secret, and he does his job, and he and Eudora share knowing looks and small smiles, brush their fingers against one another’s whenever they’re close enough to do so. 

He feels things. He feels anger, and bitterness. He feels frustration. Eudora makes him feel amused, and happy, and understood. He wishes they didn’t have to be stuck in this gym together, cleaning and sweeping and being shoved around and dismissed. 

They close up together, when all the humans go back home and it’s just them. The place is spotless because they cleaned it. There’s an unhealed scratch on Diego’s left eyebrow from a fight he wasn’t allowed to defend himself equally, or at all in, and no one’s bothered to patch him up. Eudora’s fingertips ghost over it as they sit down beside one another on a bench they’re not usually allowed to sit on, and that their programming shouldn’t allow them to do anyway.

“I wish I could fix it,” she offers, and her fingers trail down from his forehead to his cheek, feather-light, and they make Diego feel something else, something warm and heavy and he doesn’t understand it, but he leans into the touch. Eudora smirks a little as she adds, “but it makes you look badass.”

“Oh yeah?” He says, smirking as well. “Do you like it better?”

It’s a subtle question, but Eudora shouldn’t be able to like it unless a human has told her to. She shouldn’t prefer it. Androids can’t have preferences. Their coding prevents them from emotions, from preferences, from free will; she shouldn’t feel it unless she has deviated, and Diego would know if she’s deviated.

But she smiles, something hesitant and knowing, and says, “yes.”

### 

His respiratory system is working perfectly, but he feels as if something is clogged in his lungs, his throat. His chest feels too tight. 

Eudora’s head tips to the side, and a hair falls out of the ponytail it’s always in.

Diego kisses her.

### 

Diego wants to deviate.

The idea is frightening, and if found, it would get him killed - deactivated. But he wants to deviate. He wants to leave the gym, he wants to shake free of all the orders, he wants to be free, with Eudora. He wants to feel things to the extent he knows he could if he just deviated. He wants what he already feels to feel more real.

He and Eudora discuss in whispers when the gym is closed. They could deviate, they could run. They could blend in just like a human, and no one could find them, no one would ever treat them with the same hatred and injustice they treat them now just for being an android. They could live their own lives. Diego could say he felt love.

But they never get the chance.

They close the gym like they do every time, but it is slower than usual, because there is a group of men that refuse to leave. Diego thinks they’re intoxicated, and their bravado is higher than usual, and they don’t like taking orders from an android. As he sweeps, he watches Eudora try to coax them out with friendly words and smiles.

And then one of them hits her.

Diego isn’t allowed to intervene. It goes against everything in him to put a human’s wellbeing in risk, in danger, and when he steps closer, yelling at them to stop, they tell him to stand down and he does, because it’s an order and he’s programmed to follow orders.

But they keep hitting her. They keep kicking her. Laughing as she tries to shield herself, as she tries to get the upper hand and fails, as she cries out in fear and pain that she shouldn’t feel but she does.

The first thing Diego feels when he deviates is anger.

It drowns everything else out, spurs him on to move from his spot, to throw the humans away from Eudora, to make sure they stay down. He doesn’t feel bad as his sensors pick up each time another heartbeat fades away until there’s none in the gym. He only feels guilty that he didn’t act quicker.

Eudora is injured. There’s thirium everywhere, and her biocomponent is damaged, and oh god she’s  _ dying. _

He doesn’t register the fact that he is hurt, too, until he tries to speak and it comes out slow, stuttering, a result of a hit to the throat he got in the scuffle. Eudora understands him all the same, one hand gripping his arm as he lifts her off the floor, and she smiles at him.

“Go,” she tells him. “Run, before they - before they find this. Find you. Run, Diego.”

He’ll be scrapped for this. It doesn’t matter that they attacked Eudora first, that they killed her; they’ll scrap her body, then they’ll chase him and they’ll scrap him too, and probably any other android of Diego’s model just in case it’s a malfunction in them all. 

And it isn’t fair. 

“Diego,  _ go _ ,” Eudora urges, and her voice trails, stutters, glitches. She shoves him, but it’s weak. 

Diego lays Eudora down gently, so gently, and she closes her eyes. His fingers ghost underneath her chin, feather-light, and her body goes limp as she shuts down, and then he removes the damaged biocomponent from her chest. She won’t die slowly, alone in this horrible gym, at least.

Her blood stains his fingers, and Diego stands up. The anger he felt, hot and raging beneath his skin, returns to him at the sight of her body, damaged and hurt and dead, at the knowledge that even if the humans were alive, they would receive no punishment for her murder.

Diego holds onto his anger, and he runs.

### 

He changes his appearance, pulls out his LED. No one can tell him from any other human, and he expertly dodges temperature checks dotted around the place. He integrates perfectly, because he looks, acts, and feels like any of them. He has his own emotions, his own desires, his own fears, his own grudges.

He lives among the humans for five months. He studies them, he gets to know how they act better, he witnesses how they treat androids with a better perspective, now that he’s deviated, and it’s all  _ unfair. _

No one pins him on the death of the humans in the gym. No one blames the humans for killing Eudora. It was as if she never existed; as if she never mattered.

Seven months after her death, Diego catches word of a group of androids. Of deviants.

Eight months after her death, Diego finds a community of deviants hiding from humans. There are all kinds there, different models with different backstories, with different reasons for deviating, hiding for different reasons. 

Diego is tired of hiding, though, and he’s no more afraid of a human than he ever has been. He settles with the deviants, but he can’t settle down. They’re afraid, and they want to stay hidden.

Diego wants to be known. Diego isn’t afraid, Diego is angry, and he’s angry that to stay alive he has to hide for the rest of his existence, and it’s not fair. It’s never been fair.

If Eudora were here, she’d tell him to do something about that.

So he plans to.

**Author's Note:**

> Ngl I had fun writing this one
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, feel free to leave a kudos or a comment, all is greatly appreciated :)  
> Luther has a oneshot in this series as well, featuring some brief glimpses of a few other characters. The next one up will be Allison, if you feel like following the series <3


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